UTICA, Ky. — The path James Perkins has taken to become an International Mission Board missionary is not an obvious one.
He’s been a soldier, during which time he served a one-year deployment in Afghanistan. Then he owned a grocery store. But the call to missions became evident this past January.
“For a few years, I knew God was calling us to do more,” he said. “We needed to pray about it and fully submit to God. Submitting was probably the biggest part of that. Everybody is chasing the American dream and, when you do that, you become selfish. In the winter of 2022, I had a grocery store, my wife was teaching, and for both of us every Sunday school lesson, every sermon and devotional, all seemed to be pointing to missions and that God was calling us to do that.”
That call led Perkins to sell the grocery store and start seminary classes. “This past January we knew — after a lot of prayer — that we definitely were not just called into ministry, but to foreign missions. Then we started the process with the IMB this past February.”
James and his wife Teresa will be commissioned in Murfreesboro, Tenn., this weekend (Nov. 10). After reporting to Richmond, Va., in January, they will go to language school for one year. While in that school, they also will work with local Baptist churches in mission work. Their goal is to serve as missionaries to indigenous people.
They are members of Green Brier Baptist Church in Utica, Ky., which is pastored by James’ dad, Jackie Perkins. The couple is believed to be the first IMB missionaries from the church which dates its founding to 1820. James has been serving as a deacon in the church.
Going to a new region of the world is not a new experience for James. He was stationed in Mannheim, Germany, when the deployment to Afghanistan occurred – and the assignment was different from what most soldiers experience.
He was one of 12 soldiers who would go “outside the wire” – a military term meaning off the military base – and be gone five weeks at a time, traversing desert terrain and the Himalayan Mountains. Then the team would return for one day to resupply, and then go off base for five more weeks. Only about 1 percent of military personnel have that type of schedule – one that is considered particularly challenging because of the constant cycle of deployment and reintegration.
As a schoolteacher, Teresa said she always looked at the classroom as her mission field. She worked 17 years in the Kentucky public school system and said she is looking forward to “working in the villages with the women there and broadening the women’s studies.”
This article originally appeared in Kentucky Today.
